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Index

USB memory sticks at 64GB

Not so long ago it was a talking point to own a a 64MB USB memory stick. Now 64GB sticks are filtering through. I ordered a Kingston 64GB dongle from an on-line supplier ("10 units in stock") but after waiting two weeks I was told they were not in stock. A plague on their house and I will look elsewhere in future. This morning I did a trawl of Tottenham Court Road, the mecca for geeks of all ages, sizes and shapes.

But nary a whiff of a Kingston 64GB stick, and I needed one for my travels. So I settled for a 32GB Kingston stick from Protape in Percy Street. Very helpful and well priced. Most of my mission-critical files can go on this memory with sufficient space to cope with incremental backups.

Memory is becoming cheaper and cheaper. In my MacBook Air I have a 64GB solid-state drive and that came at a huge premium twelve months ago. Now they fit 128GB for a lower retail price. And 256GB drives are now readily available. Soon, I imagine, all notebooks will be fitted as standard with solid-state drives instead of trouble-prone mechanical units. SSDs do not require periodic de-fragmentation and they are likely to be much more reliable in a mobile computer. My own experience shows that my Air boots much faster from an SSD than from a mechanical drive, and I believe that applications and data load quicker. So there is no downside other than cost, and that is being addressed as I write.